A blog containing free to use cross stitch designs, doodles and musings.

Wednesday, 3 June 2015

My craft room storage

Hello everyone

Since it is spring I have been having a nice tidy up of my sewing/crafting area. Many crafters will know that a tonne of crafting stash and tools comes with the hobby since you never know if you will need a bit of this or that in your latest project.

So heres a few of the ways I store my crafting stash.

My drawers:

These Drawers are my favourite way to store my crafting stash. I got them flat packed from Jysk a few years ago. Each drawer is labelled with a different type of item to aid in organisation.
The drawers each come out of the unit for ease of access to items inside. I just love the way I can take out my whole drawer and rummage around in each basket to find the item I want. Its also handy if I want to take all my threads downstairs since I can just carry the whole basket around the house.

The drawers are identical which did not help at first since each drawer can go in any location in the drawers I could not simply remember what location each item is in. To solve this issue I cross stitched a bunch of labels and pinned them onto the fabric lining.

I will be posting up some new designs for my labels soon I'd love to update then now I have more experience in designing and cross stitching.

My step mum loved the idea of this storage but could not find an equivalent set of drawers in shops near her so emulated the same effect by getting a deep bookshelf and several boxes which fit into the shelves. However she has a much larger stitchy stash than I do so a much larger collection of boxes. Theres still time for me to pick up more bits and pieces though.

Here's a little example of whats in a drawer. Its not the most organised of places. :)

Shoe rack:

After putting in the shelving units I still wanted to make the most of the space on top of them. Just piling extra boxes on top didn't make things very accessible and sometimes lead to me buying doubles of certain items just because they were hidden away in a box on the bottom of the stack.
The cheapest method I found to increase storage space on these furniture top areas is to buy flat, solid shoe racks. Each of the racks I have here were £5. The shortness of the racks means that when placed on top of my existing furniture it doesn't get too high and I have lots more space to put more boxes and baskets of bits and bobs. Folding table:

I am lucky enough to have a whole room for my crafting but having a large table in there for cutting out wider pieces of fabric took up most of the space I had in the room. Since I make teddy bears and cross stitch most of the time it wasn't always needed to be so big. The ideal solution for me was my lovely folding table that I found in a charity shop. One half is folded against the wall until its needed and I can pull it out again.
One thing to be wary of is to ensure that any folding table you get is very sturdy. It will certainly be terrible for it to collapse or wobble while cutting out fabric!

For anyone who is wondering that rocking horse in the back of the picture is my very own Dobbin the donkey. Hes actually over 30 years old and has been well loved by many kids in our family. However now hes missing an ear, patches of fur including mane and tail and is rather dirty. The plastic frame for him is actually quite sturdy so one of my next projects will be to make a cute new cover for it so that it can maybe last another 30 years with the new generation of kids in my family.

Folding Storage box and stool:

This storage box is a very useful piece of kit. Even when its empty its strong enough to be sat or stood on or even used as a footstool. This box is currently full (I mean absolutely ram packed) of fur and fabric scraps .
When its not needed the whole box folds away into the lid making it really easy to store away. I like to have it up around the room because it helps me reach my high shelves.Folding Laundry baskets and storage baskets:

So readers, you may see a pattern by now, I really love foldable items. It really helps to increase space or storage as my stash requires.
My big baskets are simply foldable laundry baskets. When I have used up part of my stash and have an empty basket I can just fold it and tuck it away until I inevitably buy lots more fabric.

The best thing is that since Laundry baskets are made for clothing they are generally kind to fabrics unlike some ornamental boxes I have owned which have caused snags. :(

Sewing item Baskets:

Heres one last basket in my crafting area. This one is just a small one to contain several essential items I need while using the sewing machine such as pins. Its very useful to have them all handy and in one place.
Next time I'll tell you about small items which I find rather useful in my crafting stash. Items I just cannot do without. :)
See you all then
Gemma